by Damon Knight
Farley poured it and she sat down once more and drank before she spoke again.
“I came back here to see which side of the rope I’ll land on. The next time I’ll finish the dream and find out.”
Sam reached for the bottle and poured bourbon into his cup. “A lousy dream,” he muttered.
“Indifference, that’s what made it a nightmare. Their indifference,” Victoria said quietly. She sipped at her drink and went on. “It’s the same way we might break up an anthill and watch the ants scurry. Or how we tear a spiderweb and maybe see the spider dart away, or not. We don’t care. We watch or not, it doesn’t matter. Like the bank camera that photographs me when I go to the window. Me, a bank robber, someone asking for information, it doesn’t matter, the camera clicks its picture.” She was starting to slur her words slightly. Her voice was low, almost inaudible part of the time. “It . . . they watched me like that. They didn’t care if I went over the cliff or not.”
Farley felt the hair rise on the back of his neck and wondered if she realized what she was saying. She wasn’t talking about the dream any longer.
“They didn’t care if I went over the cliff. They didn’t care if I stopped, or ran, what I did.” She drained her cup, then set it down on the ground with elaborate care. “That’s inhuman,” she said. “Not like a god, the opposite of what it would be like for a god. Beyond all idea of good and evil. No awareness of good and evil.”
Sam sighed and said, “She’s drunk. She never could drink.” Victoria pushed herself up from the ground. She nodded. “I am,” she said carefully. “I’ll go to bed now.” Both men rose. She looked at Farley. “I know why I’m here. I have to see where I land. And I know why Sam’s here. He’s looking for God. Why are you here? What is your noble cause?” She was taking care to pronounce each word, as if speaking a foreign language. “You’re too stinko to talk any more tonight.”
“I can’t talk, but my ears are not drunk. My ears are not blurring anything.”
“Will you remember?”
She nodded an exaggerated yes.
“It’s my land. Over the years twenty-five or thirty head of cattle have gone over that cliff. Two people have vanished in that area. My land. I have to know what’s there. I put it off and pretended it was just a superstition, wiped it from my mind, but I can’t do that now. You won’t let me do it ever again.” He paused, examining her face. “Do you understand that?”
“No, but I don’t have to.” She began to walk unsteadily toward the tent. “Because it’s not true,” she said, then ducked under the flap of the low tent.
It was true, though. He wanted to exorcise a devil, Farley thought, sitting down again. And Sam wanted to find God. All Victoria wanted was to learn the truth. They’d both use her, and through her they might find what they looked for. Across the fire from him, Sam sat brooding, staring into the flames.
“I want to stay up tonight,” Sam said abruptly. “Just in case there is something down there.”
Farley nodded. “We’ll take turns. You want to sleep first?” Sam shrugged, then wordlessly got up and went to his sleeping bag spread on the ground a short distance from the fire.
Farley sat with his back against a pine tree and watched the shifting patterns of light and shadow as the moon moved across the sky. From time to time he added a small stick to the fire, not enough to blaze much, just to maintain a glow to keep the coffee hot. A fire during a night watch was friendly, he thought, nudging a spark into flame.
What was he doing here? What he had answered was part of it. Maybe all of it. He didn’t know. For hundreds of years people around this area had known this piece of land was strange, not to be trusted. The Indians had shunned it for generations. His father had known it was not safe for cattle or men and had fenced it off. Easier to cross off three hundred acres out of ninety thousand than to pursue a riddle that probably could not be solved anyway. He would have done the same if Sam and Victoria had not forced him to examine it. He was examining many things suddenly, he admitted to himself.
“You have so many books!” Victoria had exclaimed. “Did you major in geology?”
There were four shelves of geology books. “Nope. That’s why I have to keep reading. Can't find the one I’m looking for, I guess.”
“And that is?”
“Life and death, desert style. Something like that. Someone who can relate the earth cycles to life cycles. I’m not sure, that’s why I keep reading and searching.”
“You’ll have to write it yourself,” Victoria had said.
And Fran had asked, “Aren’t you lonely?”
He was sure he was not lonely in the sense she meant, but there had to be more. A few months ago he had not known that. Every day he got up at dawn and worked as hard as any of the hands on the ranch, doing the same kind of work, doing more than any of them most days. Dinner at six, read, bed by ten. There were women in Bend, one in Prineville, all very casual, non-compelling.
He was evading again. Why was he here? He had come home because he could not live in the city. He had found strength in this harsh desert. But evil had followed him, had claimed his mother. Sometimes when the phone rang late at night, he found himself pausing, willing it to be his father telling him it was all over finally. Sometimes he found himself watching Serena playing with her children and he almost hated her for being able to find a good life so simply without any effort at all.
He could have married Serena. They had experimented with sex together; at the time they both had assumed they would marry when they were grown. Something in him had said no, and he had practically pushed her into the arms of Charlie Hendricks. And Fran. She would have gone to school with him. Their parents had expected it, and even discussed the financial arrangements. Instead he had decided he couldn’t handle a bride and the university at the same time. Leave him alone, his mother had said, he’ll find himself in school. But he had found nothing.
He had been drafted and at first he had believed he was finally going to do something worthwhile. He had discovered only despair and hopelessness. School again, sinking ever deeper, then the flight home to the safety of the land. Here, he had thought, was the only place he had been able to find any hope. Here nothing was unclean, nothing was evil. The coyotes, the bobcats, the summer frosts and the winter droughts all were proper here.
He had sought refuge in work on this healing land, only to learn that evil was here too. Not the land! he wanted to howl. And he knew this time there was no place he could go, no last refuge he could bury himself in.
Reluctantly, compelled by circumstances he could not understand, he accepted that finally, after years of flight, he would stand and confront the enemy.
IV
Victoria dreamed that her boss was coming, that he would rage at her for not doing her work better. “I’m doing the best I can,” she cried. “Even a child could do it better,” he stormed at her. And she woke up.
The light was as it had been the other night, perhaps not as bright, but almost. She didn’t make any noise; she knew that either Farley or Sam would be up, and for the moment she didn’t want to talk to anyone. She remembered the dream. No boss had ever raged at her in that way. A child could do it better, of that she was certain. Slowly she sat up and waited for the moment of terror to pass. It always overwhelmed her when she first awakened; then it receded, but never completely.
Now she could see Sam, a dear profile against the pale horizon. His full beard made his head look grotesquely oversized. He had aged. It was as if he had left Shangri-la and before her eyes were passing into the mundane world where age caught up. He looked old and tired. He looked frightened. She tried to imagine Farley frightened as Sam was, and somehow it was harder to picture him so. She didn’t understand Farley. Something was driving him, and she didn’t know what.
Something was out there that each of them needed to learn about. They had followed Farley’s plan, had searched all day by sunlight, on horseback, then on foot, and had found nothing.
But the moon changed the land; it made strange things possible.
“You should be sleeping,” Sam said when she joined him.
“I know. The silence and the moonlight woke me up, I think. Has it been quiet all evening?”
“Yup. Not a thing stirring.”
She sighed. “The desert is very beautiful at night, isn’t it. That’s a surprise. I’d read that, but it’s like reading that the ocean is beautiful, or that the sunset is beautiful. It’s meaningless until you see it. I can almost understand why Farley wants to stay here.”
Sam laughed. “Nobody understands why Farley stays here. He’s a hermit.”
“Sam,” she said, “after tonight, then what?”
He shrugged.
“I mean, what if nothing happens?”
“Then I come back tomorrow night, and the next night, and the next night.”
“But what if nothing ever happens?”
“Vicky, don’t talk about that right now. Let’s watch the horse. Let’s watch the desert. Watch the shadows on the face of the moon. They deepen as you watch. Let’s not talk about anything else right now.”
She sat down beside him. “May I smoke?”
Sam laughed irritably. “I wish you’d stayed asleep.”
“I know. I’m just nervous. What if noth—” Suddenly she stopped. The horse had a listening attitude; its ears were straight up, poised. They were like the ears of a racehorse before the signal. It was sniffing the air. And now, coming from nowhere, Farley was there with them.
The three of them watched the horse as he sniffed the air and pawed. He was pulling at the tether, neighing. The other horses, hobbled on the safe side of the fence, answered sleepily. They weren’t interested. Whatever it was that had wakened the one horse hadn’t bothered them. Now he was acting wild, rearing.
Farley said, “You two stay here, I’m going to go get it.” He ran to the gate and opened it very quickly.
Victoria closed her eyes. She didn’t know what she expected, but she didn’t expect him to return with the horse. Somehow that seemed too simple.
After a moment, Sam shook her and said, “Well, whatever it was we’ll probably never know. That horse sure isn’t going to tell us.” Farley was standing before them with the horse. He led it to the others, hobbled it, and returned. He looked stunned, and bewildered, and he looked frightened.
“What was it?” Sam asked brusquely.
Farley said, “We—we’ll all have to go across that fence and hear it. You can’t hear it from here.”
“The river!” Victoria cried.
Farley nodded. “You can hear the river over there.”
For a moment no one moved as they listened to the still desert. Then they went through the gate together and stopped a few feet from the fence.
Victoria strained to hear, but there was nothing. Everything looked the same, yet different, the way it always looked unchanged even while changing. She thought Sam was cursing under his breath. He strode ahead, holding himself too stiff. Angry, she thought, and disappointed. Abruptly Sam stopped, gazing upward at the ridge.
“Farley, look!”
A woman had appeared on the ridge, making her way clumsily through the jumbled boulders. She glanced backward once and hurried even more. A flicker of light appeared around the rocks.
Victoria felt Farley clutching her arm too hard. “It’s me,” she breathed. His grip tightened.
The other Victoria ran wildly down the slope of a hill they could not see. She was dashing panic-stricken through the air, and behind her, gaining on her, came the cloud of lights. The cloud flickered all about her, like a swarm of fireflies. The light did not illuminate, it obscured the racing figure.
Now she was coming down the ridge, drawing near the edge of the cliff, stumbling, falling, rising only to stumble again. Suddenly she flung herself down and drew up her legs in a tightly curled position. The swarm of cold lights settled over her, seemed to expand and contract with her breathing. Minutes passed. The expansion was less noticeable, the lights more compactly together. Suddenly the woman stirred and rose, moving like a sleepwalker. She looked straight ahead and started to walk slowly, carefully down the side of the mesa. The swarm of lights stayed with her, but she was oblivious of them. At the bottom she turned toward the ranch road where Sam’s camper was parked. Moving without haste, she passed the camper, opened the gate, returned to the vehicle, got in and drove through. Ten or fifteen feet from the gate the light swarm stopped, hovered in air for a few moments, then streamed back up the cliff, like a focused light beam that could move around curves with ease.
Victoria felt the frozen, supporting rigidity leave her. She sank to the ground.
“Me too,” Farley muttered, his arm still about her. They sat huddled together.
“I’m going over there,” Sam said. He started in the direction of the camper, stopped after a dozen or so paces. He came back to them and also sat down. “Gone. It’s not there.”
Victoria freed herself from Farley’s arm and stood up. “We have to go up to the ridge,” she said. She felt almost detached.
“Okay,” Farley said, “but first we go to camp and get flashlights and jackets. We may be out for hours, and it can get damned cold.”
Impatiently Sam started back to camp; Victoria and Farley followed more slowly.
“Are you all right?”
“Yes.” She really was, she realized. Since they had seen something, too, the strangeness must be in the land, in the valley, not in her; her relief made her almost giddy.
At the campsite, Sam already had his jacket on and his day pack slung over his shoulder. He handed Victoria her pack and tossed the third over to Farley, who knelt and started to rummage through it. Victoria snatched up her jacket. Farley moved to the big packs.
“Come on,” Sam said. “You put flashlights in. I saw you do it.” He turned and strode toward the gate again. Victoria hurried after him.
“I’m getting my camera,” Farley called. “Be right with you.”
“Ass!” Sam said. “Like a goddamn tourist.”
The gate was still open and they left it that way for Farley.
“I think the best way up is—” Sam stopped, his hand on Victoria’s arm. “Jesus!”
It was different. The crystalline light was changed: a pale mist dimmed the moonlight; the air was soft and humus-fragrant, the coolness more penetrating. To the right Ghost River thundered and splashed and roared. Victoria looked behind them, but the gate was no longer there. The ranch road was gone. Underfoot the ground was spongy; wet grass brushed her legs. She looked to the ridge that had become a wooded hill, and over the crest of the hill streamed the light swarm, winding sinuously among the trees toward her and Sam.
V
Farley hesitated at the gate, then left it standing open; the horses were safely hobbled, and a quick retreat might be necessary. He was carrying his camera, his pack over his shoulder, not strapped yet. He began to hurry. He hadn’t realized the other two had gotten so far ahead of him.
“Sam! Victoria!” His echo sounded as dismal and lonesome as a coyote’s call. He stopped to study the cliff up to the ridge, and he felt a chill mount his back, race down his arms. The cliff was almost vertical, the road they had been on was gone; ahead the cliff curved, and the narrow terrace ended dead against the wall. He backed up a few steps, denying what he saw. He strained to hear the river, and heard instead a low rumble, and felt the ground lift and fall, tilt, sink again; the rumble became thunder. He was thrown down, stunned. The thunder was all around him. Something hit him in the back and he pulled himself upright, only to find the ground really was heaving and the thunder was an avalanche crashing down the cliff all around him. Frantically he ran, was knocked down again, ran, fell, until he was away from the cliff. He stumbled to the horses, groped blindly to untie them, and he fell again and this time stayed where he fell.
He dreamed he and his mother were having a picnic at Fort Rock. The Fort was a natural formati
on, an extinct volcano, the caldera almost completely buried; what remained formed an amphitheater where he was on stage, she his audience of one. He recited for her and she applauded enthusiastically; he sang and danced, and when he made his last bow she came to him with tear-filled eyes and hugged him. She was very pretty, the wind blowing her hair across her face, her cheeks Bushed under the dark tan, her eyes shining blue and happy. She opened a beach umbrella and they stayed under it out of the sun, while she read to him and he dozed.
He dreamed he was in the hospital. He had taken her place, had released her. People kept wanting to talk to him, kept wanting him to speak, but he wouldn’t because then they would learn they had the wrong patient.
He woke up and felt a terrible confusion because he was in a hospital bed; his father was sleeping in an armchair at the window. For a long time Farley didn’t speak, hoping that if he remained perfectly still he might wake up again in his own bed.
He studied the peaceful face of his father. The late afternoon sun gave his pale face a ruddiness that had faded months ago. His father was fifty-seven and until recently had always looked ten years younger than he was. Relaxed now, he looked as he had when they used to go on all-day outings—like the trip to Fort Rock … A memory stirred, a dream surfaced, and he realized why his father was here, in his room, not in hers.
He started to get up, and grunted with pain.
“Farl! You’re awake?” Will Chesterman moved with such effortless speed that people often thought of him as a slow man, very deliberate. He awoke, crossed the room and was leaning over Farley all in one motion.
“Dad. How’d I get here? Mother?”
“No talking. Supposed to call the nurse the second you open your eyes. No moving. No talking.” He pushed a button on the call box and after a moment of muted static a woman answered. “My son’s awake,” Will said. The nurse said she would call the doctor, to please keep Farley quiet . . .